Patterns of Delinquency and Personality Traits of Adolescents in Child Labor

Abstract

The present research was designed to explore the patterns of delinquency and personality traits of adolescents in child labor. It also investigated whether laborer adolescents with different demographic variables differ on delinquency. It has been accomplished in three parts. Part I dealt with the development of delinquent measures i.e. Self-reported delinquency scale (DRDS) and the Informant-reported delinquency scale (IRDS). A sample of (N= 200) adolescents and their informants (N= 180) involved in different labor work i.e. workshops (n= 65), general stores (n= 47), restaurants (n= 40), beggars (n= 23) and trash collectors (n= 25). The sample was selected from Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The results of factor analysis showed both the scales have well established construct validity with sufficient alpha reliabilities. Part II of the present research was accomplished in two phases. Phase I dealt with the translation, adaptation and cross language validation of Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-Junior) (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1970). In phase II psychometric properties of EPQ-(Junior) Urdu version were established. The main study (Part III) was carried out on a sample of 250 adolescents. Their age ranged from 13 to 17.11 years (M=16.21; SD=2.1) and their Informants (N=220 ) with the age ranging from 25-55 years (M=48.37; SD=1.89). About 56% of sample had an education level up to primary and rest of 44% were primary and above. They were working in workshops (n= 80), general stores (n= 49), restaurants (n= 60), beggars (n= 28) and trash collectors (n= 29). It was aimed to find out the relationship between selfreported delinquency and personality traits of adolescents in child labor and to see whether individuals with different demographic variables are differing on the selfreported delinquency and Informant-reported delinquency. Three scales i.e., SRDS, IRDS and EPQ (Junior) Urdu version were administered. The findings revealed satisfactory reliabilities of scales. Findings revealed significant positive correlation between selfreported delinquency and informant-reported delinquency and personality traits. One way Anova findings on the age wise differences, Labor type and self-reported delinquency enlighten that the increase in delinquency with age and no effect of labor type on delinquency. Findings on the independent sample t- test revealed that participants with less education significantly reported high delinquency, similarly participant with more duration of labor reported high delinquency. Multiple Linear Regression analysis results revealed high predictability of extraversion, psychoticism, and neuroticism traits with self-reported delinquency. The comparison of mean scores of EPQ-(Junior) for the whole sample of 450 laborer adolescents with age revealed that that there was increase in extraversion with age and decrease in lie with age, and there was no change for psychoticism and neuroticism scores with increase in age. The comparison of the age trends for collective sample of 450 laborer adolescents contributed in part I and part III of the present research was made with the standardization data of EPQ- (Junior)( Eysenck & Eysenck, 1970). Results for both of the data showed increasing trends for extraversion and decreasing trends for lie with age. Similarly as compared to Eysenck there was increase in neuroticism with age for present study sample.